


The Casualty

by DearlyStar



Series: Moments to Nowhere [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Conflict, Courage, Death, Epiphany, F/M, Fear, Love, Marauders' Era, Near Death Experiences, One Shot, POV First Person, Privilege, Pureblood Culture, Realization, Short One Shot, Social Commentary, Wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 03:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8733448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DearlyStar/pseuds/DearlyStar
Summary: "She lives in an experience so fundamentally different from mine… and we live in the same damn world. To me, magic is safety, a birthright and a natural way of life. To her, it marks her as caught between worlds, where to live on one side is to hide a vital part of her identity, and to live on the other means risking her life for the magic she was born with... the talent that defines her very person."James has an epiphany.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written as a social commentary to mirror the theme of privilege between the magical world and our own mundane existence. The beauty of the Potterverse is that there are so many parallels to the real world, and the exploration of prejudice, racism and social privilege is present throughout the series. I hope that each person who has social or economic privilege experiences (though hopefully in a less traumatic way) the truth of social difference, privilege, and the systems of oppression that create the privilege they have, and that they use that knowledge to help bring about equity for all people.

Privilege is a funny thing. It lifts you up and wraps you in a protective bubble while simultaneously blinding you to many different realities. Privilege is where I've always lived: a comfortable house in the countryside... a supportive, hell, adoring family… everything I've ever wanted that gold could buy… and a guaranteed place in the wizarding world. I've sucked every last bit off that silver spoon, and gone in for seconds.

 

But one night, everything got blown to hell… shattered.

 

That night, I finally understood. 

 

I joined the Order of the Phoenix right after graduating from Hogwarts. The moment I stepped off the boat across the lake and boarded the train, I knew what I would do. There was never a moment of hesitation, no reluctance, no qualms. Call it the idiocy of youth, call it whatever you want. I stand by my decision. But nothing prepared me for this. Combat. Death. Nothing prepares you. Not the seven years of training in magic of all kinds. Not the conflicts of a school boy. The trivial moments of doubt and of triumph experienced at school seem to have flown a million miles away with no intent of returning to roost in my soul.

 

It was my first mission, and it had gone south almost the moment they hit their target. We had miscalculated; there were way too many of them, and not enough of us. Voldemort had threatened a mass killing in a major muggle metropolitan area before, but never like this. Chaos. Spells bouncing off of the tunnel walls as people screamed. Panicked figures sprinting for the stairs out onto the street from the underground, surrounded by a world gone up in flames and choked with smoke. 

 

In the pandemonium, I realized that the Death Eaters weren't after anyone specific. They were aiming at anyone around that they knew wasn’t one of them. A woman with graying hair and a shopping bag crumpled ten feet from me. Beyond her, it was impossible for me to see. Smoke filled the air. Then nothing but blackness as the lights were taken out. I wasn't sure where to aim, or whether to find cover, or even where cover was. My brain was operating on the sheerest animal instinct. Self-preservation.

 

I heard someone yell, “She’s that mudblood!” It was followed by a desperate scream, and a horrible, amused laugh.

 

I remember thinking, weirdly, that the flash of green looked like a firework on a foggy night. The air that moved in and out of my lungs clung like it refused to be breathed. The lamps in the underground flickered just long enough to confuse me further before I stumbled forward. My feet hit something large, solid, and soft. My stomach clenched. 

 

I knew what that was.

 

The next flash of green light told me I was right. It was a body, facedown, still and heavy, lying there like a placeholder for a conscience. A personality that had briefly departed, planning on returning, but finding itself unable to do so. 

 

And that body had long, red hair.

 

I nearly vomited. My knees hit the floor, the world converging on her figure. Turning her body over in the returned blackness, I illuminated my wand in a dangerous and terrified move to be certain, really certain that my worst fear hadn't become reality. 

 

Lily. Lily had been in London, living for a few months now. Please, just not her. Not her. I won't survive if it's her.

 

I saw eyes open, frozen in death. They were brown. Her nose was perfect, not too pointed, like my Lily’s. She was too old by several years. The woman was vaguely familiar, but my brain didn't pin a name to her. Much good a name would have done her now, cooling on cracked cement in the London Underground. I let the body drop heavily back to the ground. I was too relieved to recognize my own callousness, or the dull thud of skull hitting concrete. I could hear Vance shouting at me to get out as I staggered back to my feet. An acidic blue stream of fire missed me by inches. I disapparated.

 

I remember the debriefing vaguely. Sitting around a table, about five Order members fewer than last time. I just let it go on around me, like a current around a stone. Nobody spoke a word more than necessary. Nobody could. The fragile morale between us all has been snapped, like the neck of some sickly sparrow. I apparated home.

 

The walls of the manor house felt hollow. The moving portraits and the magical artifacts are marks of the deepest privilege I could be afforded with. Suddenly, they felt wrong somehow. Biddy had left out my dinner, still steaming warm on the grand dining table despite probably being made hours ago. I walked by it without more than a passing glance.

 

She’d been targeted. That casualty I'd tripped over, she’d been specifically targeted. One of them had recognized her as a muggleborn, and that had been all the justification needed. No mercy, no hesitation. They snuffed her out as easily as though she was a cinder in a snowstorm. Not because she was in their way, or because she was a threat to them. It was who she was. Something she couldn't help being. 

 

Because of her blood.

 

Never in my nineteen years did I ever have to deal with that. Being a target based on birthright. How fucking blind did I have to be to never see this hideous tear in the garment of my reality? 

 

This is the reality that Lily lives with every day: people, powerful people, want her dead simply for the fact of her birth. 

 

I mean, I heard the insults leveled before, but never took more than a cursory glance at what was behind them. It was wrong, of course. Every child knows that word is not to be used. It's bloody repulsive. 

 

Never were the implications further examined than to deride the words and those who spoke them. And in my absolute fucking ignorance, Lily’s served with more courage than I, or Sirius, or any other pureblood could have managed. 

 

It paints every waking hour of her day, every sleeping hour of her night. It explains the locked doors, the wards, the defenses on her home. The nervous looks through the peephole, and the messages she insists I send to let her know I got home safely, even if I apparated. 

 

She lives in an experience so fundamentally different from mine… and we live in the same damn world. To me, magic is safety, a birthright and a natural way of life. To her, it marks her as caught between worlds, where to live on one side is to hide a vital part of her identity, and to live on the other means risking her life for the magic she was born with... the talent that defines her very person.

 

So when I saw Lily throw herself out of the fireplace wreathed in green flames, with terror in her eyes, I finally understood.

 

I understood, as she flung herself at me, the fear and the doubt and the pain she feels every day for simply existing. A pain I will never feel. And when I grabbed her and we sank to the floor, relief pooling over the marble along with her tears, I tried to melt her into myself to spare her the grief and dread that define her existence. 

 

Except I know that I can't spare her. 

 

There is no magic in the world that can change the circumstances of birth, no spell that can convince others that we are all equally worthy of life and love and respect. So I will be here for her, truly now, to lend an ear to her fears. I will not be annoyed when she asks for the third time when I will be home, or dismiss the fact that she is muggleborn like it means nothing. Because it does.

 

It means she’s the bravest of all of us.


End file.
